BABY FACE (1933)

 

This week, I started another non-credit film course at the Osher Lifelong Living Institute (OLLI) at the University of Illinois here in Champaign. The course is being taught by film scholar and critic Chuck Koplinski, who has taught most of the classes I've taken. This time, Chuck's class is called: Barbara Stanwyck: Actress, Icon. For eight weeks we will be viewing films starring this legendary lady of the screen.

The first film we watched was the pre-code classic BABY FACE (1933), directed by Alfred E. Green. I actually saw this film in another one of Chuck's film classes several years ago and I also have a DVD copy. Even though I'm familiar with the movie, it was a pleasure to see it again in a classroom setting.

Stanwyck plays a young woman named Lily Powers, who works in her father's speakeasy in Erie, Pennsylvania during Prohibition. Since the age of fourteen, Lily's father has been selling her as a prostitute to his customers. One of those customers, a prominent politician, threatens to close down the business when Lily refuses his sexual advances. Before that can happen, the business burns down, and her father is killed. Not having any other prospects, Lily is prepared to accept a job as a stripper in a burlesque house. An older man whom Lily trusts advises her to use her sexual power over men to get the things she wants instead of allowing herself to be a victim. Lily takes his advice and leaves for New York with her best friend, Chico (Theresa Harris), who also worked at the speakeasy.

Theresa Harris and Barbara Stanwyck

Using her newly acquired seduction skills, a determined Lily manages to get hired as a file clerk at Gotham Trust, a prestigious bank in Manhattan. From that modest beginning, she literally sleeps her way to the top floor of the company, man by man, until she is living in high style as a kept woman by one of the banks' executives, with Chico as her maid. When a former suitor is inflamed with jealousy, he comes to their opulent apartment to shoot the executive and then kill himself. Mired in scandal, Lily attempts to come out ahead by threatening to sell her diary to a magazine unless Gotham Trust pays her $15,000 to keep quiet. But the new bank president, Courtland Trenholm (George Brent), refuses to go along with the idea and sends Lily to Paris to work at the bank's branch there, avoiding further scandal.

George Brent and Barbara Stanwyck

When Courtland comes to Paris after a few years, he and Lily fall in love and begin a romance. After they marry, they have to return to New York, as the bank is failing. The board members blame Courtland for the failure, and he must raise money for his legal defense. He asks his wife to give back all the bonds, etc., he has given her, but she refuses to give up the security she's worked for all her life. She and Chico prepare to leave on a ship going to Paris. But she changes her mind and goes back to Courtland, only to find that he's shot himself. She rides with him in the ambulance, along with her money, bonds and jewelry, all of which she intends to trade for true love.

If this story sounds outrageous and somewhat cartoonish, you must remember this was 1933, and wicked women were big box office. In fact, they had been ever since Theda Bara started destroying men in 1915. What makes this movie work is Stanwyck herself, who gives a controlled, convincing performance as Lily Powers, the ultimate sexual politician. Another less talented actress might have portrayed Lily as a Mae West type, or as Jean Harlow played a similar character in REDHEADED WOMAN at MGM in 1932. In fact, BABY FACE was Warner Brothers' answer to the successful MGM picture. 

With its themes of sexual immorality and prostitution, BABY FACE received quite a bit of condemnation and is considered to be the reason why the Hollywood Production Code was finally turned into a powerful force. After the film was released, Warner Brothers decided to make several changes and re-release a censored version which was approved by the Production Code. The original version was considered lost until a copy was found in a Library of Congress film vault in Dayton, Ohio. That version is now available to be seen.

Lily confronts her father, played by Robert Barrat

Baby Face shows off her seductive style to one of her victims.

Barbara Stanwyck and Theresa Harris looking glamorous.

Some interesting faces turn up in the picture. A young John Wayne, taking a break from his low-budget cowboy flicks, puts on a suit to play a bank employee and one of Lily's many anxious suitors. And uncredited Edward Van Sloan, known for his role as Van Helsing in Universal's DRACULA (1931) and other horrors, brings his recognizable voice to the movie as one of the banks officers. It's especially wonderful seeing beautiful Theresa Harris in a significant role. Like all African-American actors and actresses in the Hollywood of the era, she was given very few opportunities to play anything but servants, but she's given a good showcase here. And look fast for gorgeous blonde Toby Wing from FORTY-SECOND STREET (1933) as an office girl.

Next week, we're going to watch STELLA DALLAS (1937), which garnered Stanwyck her first Oscar nomination for Best Actress. It's a film I haven't seen, so I'm looking forward to it.

Barbara Stanwyck tangles with John Wayne